The idea behind shot quality in football is really a fairly intuitive one. A shot from the halfway line isn’t as good an idea as a shot from inside the six-yard box. There’s more nuance to it but you don’t need any sort of deep analytical education to grasp it. Hell, it’s right there in why goals like this one from Memphis are so memorable: because we don’t expect them to happen.

Yet, in spite of this, shot quality and the improvement of it feels like a bit of an uphill battle. Especially when it comes to coaching the idea into younger players who have a particularly frustrating problem with their shot selection (Hakim Ziyech, bij voorbeeld). However, it would appear that, one way or another, teams are starting to pay real attention to their shot selection. I noticed this while compiling some shots numbers and tweeted about it, prompting the ever lovely Colin Trainor to produce this nice summary:

Whether you talk about it in terms of shot distance or shot zones, teams across Europe’s top five leagues are cutting the fat off of their shots. This article is going to focus on the Premier League specifically, mainly because there’s just so many things to digest across Europe that this could go on forever, so a cutoff point has to be set somewhere. If you want details on what’s going elsewhere give me a bell on twitter and if there’s enough curiosity there might be a follow up.

Season

Total Shots

Outside Box Shots

% of shots outside box

Average shot distance (metres)

12/13

10562

4626

43.80%

18.96

13/14

10238

4599

44.92%

19.15

14/15

9881

4221

42.72%

18.72

15/16

9781

4046

41.37%

18.50

16/17

9734

3971

40.80%

18.37

(*distance numbers for 16/17 are a few matches out of date, but you get the gist)

The first thing that sticks out is the relationship between shots taken outside the box and the total shots numbers. Bits are getting shaved off the outside numbers with each passing season, yet those shots aren’t really being replaced with anything. However, this isn’t really ending up as a loss in end product because of the increased focus on better shots. Everything is floating around in similar totals, and the goals aren’t going away that’s for sure.

(If you’re wondering about the slight increase in distance in 13/14 that season was very, very odd in an attacking sense. There were 184 goals scored from outside the box that season, 22 more goals than the next highest total over the last five seasons. Most of those were Luis Suarez scoring against Norwich. Or at least that’s what it felt like).

Which teams then are embracing this change and leading the charge in these numbers?

Arsenal put up the lowest % from outside the box in the recently finished 2016/17 season with an exceedingly low 33.03%. This makes sense for a couple of reasons. Firstly it fits with the image of them of as the English Barcelona, building their attack around getting high value shots (by the by, Barca’s % of shots outside the box in 16/17 was 31.9%). You may also remember that in late 2014 they bought StatsDNA, an analytics company. Now, obviously it’s hard to tell from the outside how much sway they have, but Wenger has mentioned things like expected goals in the past so it seems quite likely that the sharp dropoff between the 14/15 to 15/16 season is at least partially down to StatsDNA being in the discussion and Wenger being open to what they have to say.

In that 15/16 season they absolutely crushed it on the attacking end. It was the ne plus ultra of ‘they always try to walk it in’. Their average shot distance that season was the lowest of any team over the last 5 seasons. This saw their xG per shot jump from 0.105 in 2014/15 to 0.125 which, again, was the highest of any team over that timeframe. This season they’ve become more dysfunctional in attack but that’s a whole other story entirely.

Arsenal

Season

xG per shot

Average shot distance (metres)

12/13

0.1056

18.45

13/14

0.1114

17.93

14/15

0.1056

17.80

15/16

0.1253

16.08

16/17

0.1035

17.25

Their North London neighbours Tottenham are another interesting case. Plenty has been said about how Mauricio Pochettino seems to emphasise long range shots as a part of his gameplan, and sure enough his Tottenham sides have a similarly high % from outside the box as his Southampton one. Yet even though they had the highest % overall in the 16/17 season he has still actually brought the number down from where it was before he took over. It appears that AVB was even more content for his players to take pot shots than Pochettino is. Bless his soul.

Tottenham

Season

Average shot distance (metres)

12/13

20.75

13/14

19.98

14/15

20.22

15/16

19.81

16/17

19.76

Another big (and perhaps unexpected) contributor to the overall league dropoff is your friend and mine Sam Allardyce. West Ham under Allardyce from 2012 to 2015 were always posting low %s, and then as soon as he leaves and Slaven Billic takes over those numbers shoot up. Sure enough in his lone season at Palace they had a similarly low average. His time at Sunderland is the outlier, but it seems none of the many managers they’ve gone through have been able to greatly change their numbers. Much was made from early on in Allardyce’s career about how he embraced stats and let it shape how he worked. Billic meanwhile seems to prefer the volume over quality approach.

West Ham under Allardyce

West Ham under Billic

Season

Average shot distance (metres)

Season

Average shot distance (metres)

12/13

16.60

15/16

18.29

13/14

17.33

16/17

18.52

14/15

17.25

Funnily enough there’s another manager who has this effect: the Right Honourable Tony Pulis.

West Brom Pre-Pulis

West Brom under Pulis

Season

Average shot distance (metres)

Season

Average shot distance (metres)

12/13

19.27

15/16

18.13

13/14

18.85

16/17

17.68

14/15

19.25

Allardyce and Pulis doing this shows that it’s the idea of shot location that matters, not how you achieve it. They aren’t bringing down their teams’ average shot distances with intricate play and sly throughballs like an Arsenal or a Man City are. They’re adapting the idea to the strengths of their players, utilising more headers and the like. An equally valid way of reaching the same end result.

And that’s the point of all this: teams are getting the message on shot locations and starting to remove some of the more pointless shots out of their attacking diet. Will long shots ever go away? No, nor should they. Everyone loves a thunderbastard goal from outside the box. The aim here isn’t to turn every team into a Poundland version of Barcelona. It’s just to make them a little bit smarter and to maximise what they get out of their attack.

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thought provoking & thanks. I am not a proper analyst but last para – fun is a good enough justification for me but I guess there may be more

Tactically shots from range might be the right move against packed/superior defences (that is if these could be defined/planned for); if your team can get them through & on target they could on occasion be of more value vs a high likelihood of getting disposessed or forced wide as play gets closer to goal?

Strategically, if your squad is overburdened with players who are a decent shot from range (much as location seems a much bigger factor than shooting skill) rather than players who help you get through or round defences, there might be a case for proportionately more distance shooting. Or even if decent distance shooters are more cheaply or readily available than defence-unlockers, you might make some compromises in recruitment?

i know xg models account for rebounds but I’ve never totally understood how that works specifically (hence this last bit probably is invalid in some way but here goes). I guess there’s some value assigned to their creation by shots… much as ‘you don’t shoot you don’t score’ is reductive and doesn’t help people take better shots, ‘you don’t shoot there’s no chance of a rebound to contest closer to goal’ is also true. it’s one method of getting a higher value chance I suppose.

NunyaBusiness

I guess you’d have to know how often rebound chances happen vs. how often rebound goals happen, and compared that to typical xG from where the rebound chances are happening.

kidmugsy

Interactions. If a team has a midfielder, say, who is good at shots from distance, there is an incentive for the opposing defence to rush out to block his shots. That leaves holes to be exploited. It’s to a team’s advantage to be able to “ask different questions” of a defence.

NunyaBusiness

Well that might bring up an interesting question of whether or not it’s worth it to rush out.

NunyaBusiness

The drop in the Bundesliga is particularly amazing. I also notice there are just fewer shots being taken, at least in the PL. I wonder if the Bundesliga is similar.

Rob Weaver

It is interesting you have highlighted Allardyce. I know for a fact that he doesn’t want his players to ever shoot from outside the box if there is a better option